VELUGU / INDIRA KRANTHI PATHAM

Transcription

1 VELUGU / INDIRA KRANTHI PATHAM SOCIETY FOR ELIMINATION OF RURAL POVERTY A Model Documentation Report on Addressing Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in India U. Vindhya, Alpaxee Kashyap, Nandita Bhatla, Subhalakshmi Nandi and Poulomi Pal

2 The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) is a global research institute, with headquarters in Washington D.C., United States and regional offices in New Delhi, India and Kampala, Uganda. Established in 1976, ICRW conducts research to identify practical, actionable solutions to advance the economic and social status of women and girls around the world. ICRW Asia works on a range of issues and barriers that prevent women and men as well as girls and boys from being economically stable and impede their participation in society, such as inadequate access to education and livelihoods, adolescent health, gender-based violence (GBV), notions of masculinity and gender inequitable attitudes, HIV, and violence against women and girls (VAWG). For more information, visit: SUGGESTED CITATION: Vindhya, U., Kashyap, A., Bhatla, N., Nandi, S. & Pal, P. (2018). Velugu/Indira Kranthi Patham - Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty: A Model Documentation Report on Addressing Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in India. New Delhi: ICRW DISCLAIMER This report has been prepared by ICRW with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). The facts and information in this report may be quoted or reproduced partially or in full only with prior permission from ICRW and/or BMGF. ii

3 VELUGU/ INDIRA KRANTHI PATHAM SOCIETY FOR ELIMINATION OF RURAL POVERTY A Model Documentation Report on Addressing Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in India U. Vindhya, Alpaxee Kashyap, Nandita Bhatla, Subhalakshmi Nandi and Poulomi Pal

4 Acknowledgements We are thankful to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) for their generous support to International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW) Asia Office for the project Evidence Based Systemic Approach to Addressing Intimate Partner Violence in India: Creating a New Vision which this paper is a part of. We would like to extend our gratitude to the advisory members of this project, A.K. Shiv Kumar, Suneeta Dhar and Yamini Atmavilas, for their inputs and discussions, and specifically their valuable feedback on this report. We would like to thank P. Jamuna and Aruna for helping us ideate and facilitate the field work, and also, thanks to Rukmini Rao and Anuradha Rajan for reviewing the work externally. Finally, we would like to acknowledge the internal team members of ICRW Kathryn Reitz, for quality assurance and Amajit Mukherjee for operations management and supervision. We would also like to thank Sandeepa Fanda for excellent program management assistance and Ketaki V. Nagaraju for her editorial support. Also, thanks to AD Co-authors Documentation Services Pvt. Ltd. for the external editorial support. We are grateful to Sarah Degan Kambou and Ravi K. Verma for their support and encouragement toward this study. Professor U. Vindhya Tata Institute of Social Sciences Hyderabad Subhalakshmi Nandi, Alpaxee Kashyap & Poulomi Pal ICRW Team 2

5 Content Acknowledgements / 2 Abbreviations / 4 1. Introduction / 5 Rationale of the project / 6 Key Research Questions / 6 Data Sources / 7 Ethical considerations / 7 2. Genesis and evolution of the poverty-alleviation program under SERP / 8 Conceptualization of empowerment in the SERP program / 8 Institutional structure of SERP as a driving factor / 9 Economic empowerment as the pivot of the Program / Enabling factors / 11 Institution-building and social capital / 11 Internal Catalysts: Gender Community Resource Persons (CRPs) and Gender Point Person Strategy / 12 Service delivery mechanism / 12 Intersectoral collaboration and coordination / 13 The indivisibility of economic and social empowerment / 14 Training pedagogy and content / Constraining factors / 15 Institutional crisis / 15 Budgetary allocations and funding setback leading to low priority / 15 Skewed emphasis on loans / 15 Intra-district variation / 15 Political interference / 16 Engaging with men / Conclusion / Bibliography / References / Appendix / 22 3

6 ABBREVIATIONS ADR AP BMGF CMFCCs CRP CSOs DRDA DWCRA FGD GBV ICRW IKP IPV IVRS NGOs SAC SAPAP SHGs SERP VAW Alternate Dispute Resolution Andhra Pradesh Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Community Managed Family Counseling Centers Community Resource Person Civil Society Organizations District Rural Development Agency Development of Women and Children in the Rural Areas Focus Group Discussions Gender-Based Violence International Center for Research on Women Indira Kranthi Patham Intimate Partner Violence Integrated Voice Response System Non-Governmental Organizations Social Action Committee South Asian Poverty Alleviation Programme Self Help Groups Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty Violence Against Women 4

7 1 INTRODUCTION In India, state-sponsored women s selfhelp groups (SHGs) have been active and acknowledged in alleviating poverty, addressing unemployment and empowering women through credit access, for over two decades (Dev, Kanbur, Galab & Alivelu, 2012; Galab & Rao, 2003; Kolloju, 2016). The erstwhile state of Andhra Pradesh (AP), having introduced a SHG-Bank Linkage program in 1990s, has been a leader in such initiatives with the Velugu Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP), an autonomous society registered under the Societies Act in the Department of Rural Development, being their vanguard. The SERP implements the poverty-alleviation program - the single largest of this kind in South Asia- through District Rural Development Agencies (DRDA). 1 The SHG structure is at the heart of the project. Prior to the bifurcation of AP in 2014, the unified state had nearly 40 percent of the SHGs. A distinctive hallmark of the SERP model is the social empowerment agenda aimed at addressing social inequalities, oppression and particularly, gender-based violence with specific interventions to engage with such violence. The gender strategy of SERP for responding to intimate partner violence (IPV) consisted of structures formed from the SHGs Social Action Committees (SACs) and Community Managed Family Counseling Centers (CMFCCs) to resolve IPV issues through psychosocial support and mediation, monetary compensations, legal and police aid, advocacy and awareness-raising. This project aimed to undertake a documentation and analysis of the SERP program as an IPV intervention model. In order to understand the model and the potential of a poverty program to deal with IPV, the conceptual lens was drawn from Ostrom s Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (2011) and the following variables and the nested relationships among them that have a bearing on the project were considered relevant: a) Institutional Arrangements: configurations of structures, norms, resources and strategies put in place in the governance system of SERP and relevant to the IPV intervention b) Individual Actors: people at varied levels of the programme ranging from the architects who conceptualized and designed it to 1 After Andhra Pradesh got split in 2014 into two states Andhra Pradesh and Telangana SERP was re-organized as SERP AP and SERP Telangana. 5

8 mid-level functionaries entrusted with its implementation and to the women who were the face of the response mechanism to IPV in the villages. c) Processes: operations by which these strategies and principles were put into action. Rationale of the project Although there is extensive literature on the role of SERP in poverty-alleviation, there is dearth of published data on SERP s specific strategy of addressing IPV. 2 Furthermore, despite several critiques of the micro-credit approach, the SHG strategy of mobilizing women into thrift and credit-based groups is widely observed to be valuable in poverty-alleviation (Deshmukh- Ranadive, 2004). However, evidence of linkages between these interventions for economic advancement and IPV interventions are still very limited. Recent research across the world has demonstrated that a micro-credit or jobcreation programme could increase the risk of IPV in the short term even as increase in the number of women in the paid work force reduces the risk. It has also been shown that gender-inequitable norms such as acceptance of wife-beating, perceived authority of men to control female behavior, and low educational achievement of women are risk factors for IPV and that acceptance of violence dampens the protective effect of education and economic empowerment (Boyle et al, 2009; Heise & Kotsdam, 2015). Given the fact that the SERP model is an established model for poverty alleviation and has drawn large numbers of poor rural women into the fold of SHGs and enabled their access to productive resources, it would be worthwhile to analyze the structures and processes of the model for IPV intervention. Key Research Questions With this background in view, this model documentation aims to pull together the varied elements of what constitutes the SERP model with relation to IPV and specifically around the following key questions: What was the trajectory of inclusion of IPV in a poverty-alleviation program? What are the linkages of the strategic design features of the livelihoods intervention with responding to IPV? How is IPV understood by various echelons of the program in terms of process of intervention and resolution of cases? What are the implications of reduction in resource allocation for the program? What were the additional inputs needed to engage with the issue of IPV such as capacity building and training, and whether perspectives brought in by resource persons through training had any impact on program design and implementation? 2 Two recent studies that have evaluated the processes adopted by SERP in resolving domestic violence amongst other issues are those of SERP & CWS, 2006; and Vindhya & Lingam,

9 Data Sources This report is based on: a) A document analysis of the perspective and policy documents, and reports of evaluation of SERP by SERP itself and by independent consultants; b) Semi-structured interviews with key informants: functionaries associated with the SERP project in different stages of its development in order to glean their insights; and c) Focus Group Discussions with women who had been members of the SAC/CMFCCs. The interviews and discussions were spread over a period of around 45 days from mid-september to early November 2017 and were conducted in the work settings of the informants. Three interviews were conducted telephonically. In all, 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted with former and current project leaders in the inception as well as the winding down phase (of the gender-related programme), mid-level and junior functionaries associated with implementation of the programme during varied phases, and individuals external to SERP but associated with SERP, especially in activities related to training. Two Focus Group Discussions in groups ranging from four to six members were conducted in Nagavaram and Wanaparthy (of the erstwhile Mahabubnagar district) with women who had been involved with the SACs and the CMFCCs. Four districts (two each in the bifurcated states of AP and Telangana), identified as high and low performing by the SERP staff were covered. The criteria of labeling them as high- and lowperforming included the age of the district in terms of implementation of the programme, number of IPV cases received and resolved, and nature of documentation of the cases. The highperforming districts in Telangana and AP were Sangareddy (in erstwhile Medak) and Krishna respectively, while the low-performing districts were Wanaparthy (in former Mahabubnagar) and Nellore respectively. The names of the districts were suggested by the staff of SERP who played a key role in the implementation of the social agenda from its inception. Ethical considerations Verbal informed consent was taken from all the informants after having disclosed the identity of the researcher and the institution, and after having explained the nature and purpose of the study. Permission for taking notes during the interview was taken, and no electronic recording was done. None of the informants without exception had any objection to their names being used or their statements being quoted for the purpose of the study. 7

10 2 GENESIS AND EVOLUTION OF THE POVERTY-ALLEVIATION PROGRAM UNDER SERP The SERP poverty-alleviation project has its roots in over-a-decade-long initiatives by the state in partnership with nongovernmental organizations and external funding agencies to address the issue of rural poverty. It has undergone several iterations beginning with the Development of Women and Children in the Rural Areas (DWCRA) initiative in the first phase in 1982 to the UNDP assisted South Asian Poverty Alleviation Programme (SAPAP) pilot project in 1995 to the upscaling and merger into one flagship rural development programme named Velugu in 2000 and the Indira Kranthi Patham (IKP) in 2005 covering the entire state and funded primarily by the World Bank (Dev et al, 2012). Through this evolution however, the central focus has consistently been on self-managed grassroots level institutions such as SHGs and their associative tiered structures (e.g. federations) for livelihood improvement. From the beginning, NGOs were involved in planning and conducting trainings for SERP staff and women in the villages. As a result, the trainings emphasized feminist values and positioned violence against women as a development issue while highlighting the need to organize women to hold the State accountable for justice. Conceptualization of empowerment in the SERP program Although women s collectives were the nucleus of the programme, the only reference to genderrelated intervention in the initial phase was to improve access to education for girl child laborers and school dropouts. Women s empowerment was not an explicitly stated objective but was included gradually and deliberately based on the experience from previous phases and the prevailing ideological debates on gender and poverty, which defined poverty as absence of security, empowerment and opportunity (Murthy et al, 2002; Raju et al, 2012). The debate focused on whether micro-credit can serve as a vehicle of poverty reduction as well as of women s empowerment; whether social capital of bonding and bridging between people -- by itself can help people to come out of poverty and empower themselves or whether financial 3 This change in nomenclature was due to the change in government. While Velugu (light) was named so by the then government in power headed by Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party, it was christened Indira Kranthi Patham when the Rajasekhar Reddy-led Congress came to power. Since the bifurcation of the state in 2014, the programme in AP has gone back to being referred to as Velugu while in Telangana it continues to be known as IKP. 8

11 and physical capital need to be joined together; and whether an exclusive focus on feminization of poverty sidetracks attention from a women s empowerment agenda (Mayoux, 1999). The SERP literature and evaluations of its programs make much use of the feminist typology of power as a relational concept power over, power to, power with, and power within drawn from participatory research and advocacy experiences (VeneKlasen & Miller, 2002; Wong, 2003). The micro-finance initiatives taken up in the 1980s to enhance women s financial self-reliance are viewed as an example of the power to element, though the underlying motive was improving market efficiency by creating linkages with the poor, rather than empowerment per se. SERP programme has adhered to this individualist dimension of power to for its economic empowerment approach while recognizing the broadening of the concept of empowerment to later include the power with (other women) element as key to institution-building, mobilization of the poor, and building social capital. The antecedents for inclusion of empowerment as a policy objective can be traced to the set of recommendations made by an impact evaluation of the SAPAP project in 2002 wherein for the first time, an explicit empowerment approach to poverty alleviation was adopted (see box below). Drawing from past learning, prevailing policy environment and the key shift from the development approach to the empowerment approach in the late 1990s, the SERP model adopted a three-pronged strategic framework to address the above: a) social mobilization of poor rural women into SHGs; b) skill development and capacity building; and c) capital formation. Institutional structure of SERP as a driving factor Previous experience had exhibited that solely state-driven anti-poverty programmes suffered from deficits in implementation, dearth in financial assistance and even corruption, necessitating the setting up of SERP in 2000 with an autonomous governance structure that actively worked with the government (Indira Kranthi Patham Programme, 2010).While the team was drawn from the State bureaucracy as well as from non-governmental organizations, their objective was to serve as a change agent, To place issues of feminization of poverty and women s empowerment in the official mandate of the GOI-and UNDP project and APDPIP. To initiate special pilot projects on domestic violence, reproductive rights, political participation of women. To strengthen gender and poverty component within training provided to groups... and in particular to include topics such as gender, micro-finance and poverty, women s economic, political and social empowerment, strengthening caste and gender equity perspective, collective economic interventions, networking and advocacy. To set up village-level violence protection committees. (Murthy et al, 2002). 9

12 and not merely to duplicate governmental efforts. 4 Financial support for SERP was offered majorly by the World Bank, which invested nearly 500 million USD together with the AP government (Raju, Kumar & Reddy, 2012; Prennushi & Gupta, 2014). A dedicated Gender Unit brought due attention to issues of gender equality within SERP. However, with the bifurcation of the State into Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in 2014, the simultaneous policy decision of the World Bank to reduce and restructure the number of units of the institution, difficulties in fulfilling World Bank s conditions of recruitment of unit heads, and inability to hire competent and committed domain specialists compromised the effectiveness of the programme. 5 Eventually, SERP Telangana reorganized the gender department under the umbrella of Human Development along with sanitation, education, health and nutrition; while in SERP AP, the SACs have currently been renamed as Women Protection Committees. There is no specific strategy for responding to IPV and other forms of violence against women. Economic empowerment as the pivot of the program Women s mobilization through SHGs was seen as a route toward poverty-alleviation on the grounds that women would be more concerned with household requirements, more reliable in repayments and would learn financial skills through this activity and that these groups would serve as entry points for various other activities (Kurien, 2003; Government of Andhra Pradesh, Panchayat Raj and Rural Development Department, 1999). The SHG model itself has its roots in the traditional rotating savings and credit groups long existent in the country. While the financial support was welcome, this self-sufficiency was initially met with resistance from men with aspersions cast on women s participation in meetings and attempts to control their mobility. The staff reported that the enhancement of women s economic value changed the men s perceptions; while the women in the community firmly stated that men respected them more because women were exclusively eligible for loans, so they were seen as convenient conduits. 6 However, although the initial decision-makers and designers of the SERP programme said that economic empowerment of women served as a camouflage to fend off the backlash from men, the extant literature on SHGs, and some of the interviews with SERP functionaries and SHG members indicated that it is only tenuously connected with the capability to withstand and prevent partner violence. 7 Factors such as the entry and spread of private micro-finance players in the decade of leading to over indebtedness and farmer suicides; and heightened pressures for repayment of loans which often meant that women experiencing partner violence did not get the needed social support for withstanding such violence contributed to this fragile link. 8 In summary then, the focus on economic advancement (in its limited sense) did not often lead to overall autonomy for the women. 4 Interview with Rukmini Rao, chief functionary of Gramya Resource Centre for Women, one of the NGOs involved in the initial phase in gender training of the SHG women 5 Interview with Mrudula, former Director, Gender unit, SERP Telangana 6 FGD with SAC women in Sangareddy and Wanaparthy districts. 7 FGD with SAC women in Wanaparthy district 8 Interview with T. Vijaykumar, former CEO of SERP,

13 3 ENABLING FACTORS This section and the subsequent one attempt to capture the individual/ institutional/ process level factors that either facilitated or constrained the SERP model of implementing the IPV strategy. The diagram below does so graphically. Institution-building and social capital The SERP principles of institution-building, which also guided the gender programme were: Figure 1. INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS FRAMEWORK OF IPV INTERVENTION IN THE SERP MODEL Institutional arrangements Individual Actors Action Situation Policy environment Micro-credit + social agenda Institutional structure SERP as independent support organization Funding by State and World Bank Functional specialists Separate Gender Unit Committed individuals in key decision-making positions Sense of ownership by SAC women Enablers Institution-building Service delivery mechanism Communitybased support system: SACS, CMFCCs Protocols and documentation Intersectoral collaboration Constraints Funding disruption Alternative plans not in place Over-emphasis on loans Engagement with men as perpetrators only 11

14 a) Internalization of the belief in capabilities of poor women; b) Recognition that collectivization helps women overcome poverty and marginalization; and more importantly, c) Need for an external catalyst to facilitate the process While the economic pathway of SHGs introduced collectivization, recognition grew that the social impacts were crucial for sustainability of the programme. A prevalent emphatic view among the staff and women stated that the perception that women were now in groups, 9 often functioned as a preventive mechanism to IPV. Group meetings for savings, lending, repayments and book-keeping also served as occasions for them to gather where they discussed social issues. It resulted in creation of social capital through networks, peer monitoring, the tabling of issues related to gender-based discrimination and violence. This evidently made an impact on IPV, as findings from earlier evaluation studies had also observed that several indicators of IPV (wife beating, violence linked to male alcoholism, dowry harassment) were significantly lower among SHG members, thereby providing validation of the role of collectives in preventing/ reducing violence (Murthy et al, 2002). Internal catalysts: Gender Community Resource Persons (CRPs) and Gender Point Person strategy In the early phase, Gender Resource Groups consisting mostly of lawyers and academicians were formed to provide training and inputs. However, it was realized that this was a textbook approach and a more indigenous one was necessary, which led to identification of Gender Community Resource Persons (CRPs) from among the SHG members themselves. CRPs were the nucleus of change and vital to the effectiveness of the programme, and they were the ones that facilitated the spread of the program and of feminist ideas from one village to another. Gender Point Persons were deployed at the community level to conduct the gender enquiry (discover specific gender vulnerabilities and issues), monitor the social agenda, write reports and serve as information conduits between the village and the district. This combination of the CRPs and of the Gender Point Persons, served to contribute to driving awareness campaigns on gender inequities and simultaneously for consolidating and strengthening the everyday routine procedures of responding to individual instances of IPV. 10 Service delivery mechanism The hallmark of the SERP gender programme is its response mechanism to address IPV and other forms of GBV, perhaps the first of its kind within the framework of a poverty-alleviation program. SACs were created as Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanisms and served as the first response team and the watchdog in the village for IPV. The SACs were trained by women s rights groups on feminist values. CMFCCs were run at the administrative block-level, which is higher than the village, and they function in convergence with several government departments for helping survivors to access entitlements, maintenance, and assist survivors with lodging formal police complaints, 9 Interview with T. Vijaykumar, former CEO of SERP, Interview with T. Vijaykumar 12

15 The process of resolution of cases involved the following steps (Jamuna, 2014b): 1. Receiving a written application from the complainant 2. Taking the case history and eliciting the views of the woman regarding how she wished to proceed in the case 3. Contacting the perpetrator 4. Conducting individual and joint meetings with survivor and perpetrator subsequently 5. Final signed agreement 6. Help in lodging police complaint in case the survivor did not opt for the civil remedies offered and the violence was severe necessitating registering a criminal offence providing them with livelihood support and referrals to shelters and schools. As per latest numbers, there were 418 CMFCCs across the State (Jamuna, 2014b): The Principle of Restorative Justice is the underlying principle of this mechanism, whereby both the parties are brought together, and conciliation or compensation strategies are worked out depending on the nature of the problem and the woman s decision. The SAC strategy combines a feminist understanding with the need to intervene and resolve misunderstandings and differences of opinions within the institutions of family and marriage. Preserving these institutions are not stated objectives of counseling and focus does not shift from the non-negotiability of addressing violence. The non-negotiable elements included the fact that rape cases are to be registered at the police station; divorce cases to be taken to court for the final judgment and divorce decree. Key features making this programme effective also include the continuous follow up of every case for at least six months, which built feelings of safety and trust in the complainants; and detailed documentation of cases, case history, resolution and follow up. An Integrated Voice Response System (IVRS) was also designed in 2012 to facilitate reporting, documenting and monitoring of cases through audio means, which proved useful in light of high levels of prevalent illiteracy. The tables given in Appendix 1 provide a picture of the scale and nature of cases of varied forms of gender-based violence and other gender-based vulnerabilities for which the women accessed the counseling centers, and the compensations that the SAC women negotiated and secured on their behalf. Intersectoral collaboration and coordination Intersectoral collaboration among police, judiciary, revenue, social welfare, and community services is essential for a comprehensive response to IPV. Gender forums collaborate with the social welfare department, legal aid services, police, revenue and village officials to resolve cases and secure entitlements for women. 13

16 The indivisibility of economic and social dimensions of empowerment Previous poverty alleviation programmes had shown that micro-credit alone cannot create and sustain economic, social and political outcomes of empowerment (Galab et al, 2003). The principal architects of SERP recognized that: a) gender and poverty agenda alone cannot tackle the many ways in which women are disempowered; b) specific dimensions and causes of poverty cannot be addressed without empowering women; and c) hence, specific strategies are needed to enhance women s participation in local bodies, uphold and strengthen women s rights as well as sensitize men (Murthy et al, 2002). Besides GBV, strategies for land and housing rights, gender gaps in access to basic needs and equal wages were also conceptualized. Visionary leadership in SERP and in the local governance system played a crucial role in combining economic and social elements of empowerment with their commitment, dedication and inspiring influence. Training pedagogy and content The training and exposure visits were a critical part of the program. The first phase training was conducted by NGOs where the content focused on understanding gender as a social construct and its links with power, privilege, opportunity and other social structures. Topics ranged from the life-cycle approach, social construction of gender, decision-making and control over resources, livelihoods and land rights, health, mobility and the importance of collectivization, with external facilitation and support from feminist organizations and trainers. 11 In the latter phase, training was conducted by government agencies who had received trainers training. It aimed at making the SAC women para-legal volunteers with training on laws for women, rights, and counseling techniques to resolve IPV cases. The methodology of the workshops, however, remained participatory with role-plays, group discussions and brainstorming sessions included. 11 SERP partnered with organizations such as Mahila Samata and Gramya Resource Centre for Women to provide training to the SAC women. 14

17 4 CONSTRAINING FACTORS Institutional crisis In 2014, the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh into two states: Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, accompanied with leadership and political changes led to the revamping of the gender unit. It was completely recast in AP and merged with Human Development unit in Telangana. 12 Budgetary allocation and funding setback leading to low priority With this revamping of the Gender Unit, funding allocation for gender-specific activities, e.g. functioning of counseling centers and travel expenses of SAC members to respond to cases has petered out. Alternative measures recommended by earlier studies for continued support to the women s collectives were not adopted, and support to the community organizations of women was discontinued. In some districts, SERP leadership took initiative by attaching experienced SAC women to district courts as paralegal volunteers. Today, a majority of rural women who have been sensitized, trained and have accumulated experience in intervening in cases of violence are now rudderless with their services being no longer put to use, even though they keep receiving calls from distressed women. 13 Skewed emphasis on loans The strategy of savings and credit was a vital entry point for mobilizing and empowering women. But loans taken to serve primary household needs, although understandable and indeed part of the SERP agenda, meant that micro-credit had limited potential for power redistribution. Additionally, continuous pressure for repayment, especially in recently incorporated districts, without strengthening mechanisms of IPV resolution and resulted in women s collectives being constrained to work on the gender agenda. Intra-district variation The program was implemented in phases, starting with four districts and later adding others. This was understandable owing to its scale and spread, but it meant the programme was short-lived in the districts added later, as the state was divided into two in This led to lack 12 Interview with Usha Rani, former Director in-charge of the Gender Unit. 13 Interview with Mrudula, former Director of the Gender Unit,

18 of uniformity in SAC agenda as well as practices across districts. Some districts gave identity cards to SAC women as paralegal volunteers, while others did not. The presence and kind of engagement with men was also inconsistent. Political interference Political leaders or politically-backed individuals often obstructed the work of the SAC women by hostile comments, open alliances with perpetrators, pitting them against other women in the village, threats of banishment from the village or bribes to withdraw support to the victim. This was heard primarily in lowperforming districts where SACs were more recently formed and had not achieved visibility or legitimacy. 14 Engaging with men As per the understanding of the SAC women and the staff, substance abuse and dowry demands are the major risk factors for perpetration of IPV. Accordingly, men are viewed as responsible for these and engagement with men is limited to their perpetrator roles. SACs are able to summon them, elicit a statement, attempt for conciliation while negotiating for compensation or threatening criminal charges, but the efforts do not go beyond individualized interventions. The advocacy and awareness efforts at the community level are also mainly aimed at women; and separate groups for adolescents only exist for girls, not young boys. We now have evidence on numerous other risk factors for IPV that derive from norms, behaviors, male stereotypes and relationships that sanction and promote violence (Jewkes, Flood & Lang, 2015). Also, despite the economic initiatives focused on women, there is evidence of continued male domination, of women s economic empowerment threatening male provider roles and use of IPV as a compensatory mechanism of control over women (Stern & Nyiratunga, 2017). Both these factors necessitate a gendertransformative approach wherein males are involved as allies in violence reduction through interrogation of gender-inequitable norms present at the root of IPV. Such approaches have been adopted globally in the past decade, marking a paradigm shift in IPV interventions. The SAC strategy of male engagement however, has remained tenuous. 14 Focus group discussion with SAC women in Wanaparthy district, identified as low-performing. 16

19 5 CONCLUSION This institutional analysis of SERP attempted to provide an overview of the genesis and trajectory of how the intervention related to IPV got integrated into a poverty-alleviation project; and the strengths and impediments in implementation of the intervention. The need to align social with economic agenda for empowerment emerged from experiences of the earlier phases of the project and was based on the conceptual understanding that microcredit alone cannot create a virtuous spiral of empowerment without developing explicit and holistic strategies to address various dimensions of gender subordination. The specific strategies developed to address IPV were a) the SACs small groups of women recruited from within the SHGs to serve as a first response team and watchdog at the village level, and their federations at the block and district levels; and b) the CMFCCs centers for counseling, mediation, and resolution that offered a range of services from psychosocial support to arranging for compensation, making referrals and coordinating with local governance and state agencies. Prompt and empathic delivery of services, recording of cases and documentation of procedures, and convergence with other sectors were the strengths of the IPV strategy resulting in validating the need for women s collectives as a viable platform for IPV reduction efforts, and rendering IPV as a public issue. On the flip side, institutional constraints such as budgetary cutbacks, reorganization of the Gender Unit without any alternative plans, the lopsided emphasis on loans as the primary purpose of the poverty-reduction programme, and the engagement with men as perpetrators of violence alone, have contributed to the limitations of the SERP model. What do we then learn from this analysis? While all programmes admittedly have their strengths and limitations, the lessons drawn from a poverty-alleviation project of the kind that SERP implemented, with its scale, reach and emphasis on empowerment of women, are significant. A programme of this kind can make a difference to the lives of the poor, whom it aims to reach through economic advancement, only when it is dovetailed with a concrete, deliberate and well-planned agenda for addressing the various 17

20 social conditions that create and sustain a range of vulnerabilities for women and perpetuate and reinforce violence at home in particular. Second, the kernel of the program is women s collectives. The primary purpose of these collectives is of course mobilizing women for savings and loans but the very process of collectivization for economic purposes served as the platform for bringing women out of their homes, conscientizing them about rights and laws, drawing on their leadership potential and enhancing their mobility, to counsel women abused by their partners and/or their families. As a post-script, it should be added that ironically, just as the SERP model of addressing IPV is winding down, the governments of both the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana are making full-fledged efforts to implement One-Stop Centers for providing an array of legal, medical, and psychosocial services under one roof to women and children affected by gender-based violence. 15 These centers being set up in district headquarters are also meant to provide quality services and to work in tandem with other agencies to offer a multi-sectoral response to GBV. It need not be emphasized that these services are undeniably essential but they cannot take the place of the potential for politicization, however fragile it may be, of the SAC and CMFCC initiative, drawn from the grassroots, and involving a collective, democratic form of resolution. Finally, a substantial lesson is the visibility of IPV as a public issue that accrued as a gainful outcome of the SERP program. From all the interviews of both the individuals who were skeptical about the SERP model as well as those who enthusiastically endorsed it, a common theme that emerged was the visibility of IPV as a legitimate public issue and the efforts made by the SERP model to break the culture of silence as well as to treat the issue as a serious one. Once again, it is the collectivization process and the collective action by the SAC women, supported somewhat by the institutional mandate that has enabled this change. Drawing from the literature on social capital, the concept of cognitive social capital can perhaps be used here to explain the mechanism of how recognition of IPV as a public issue, and not as a personal one, is brought about. Making a distinction between structural and cognitive forms of social capital, scholars refer to the structural form as associational and pertaining to rules, procedures, networks that facilitate mutually beneficial collective actions while the cognitive form of social capital denotes shared norms, values, attitudes and beliefs or internal processes that predispose people toward collective action (Krishna & Uphoff, 2002). The SERP intervention through the SAC and CMFCC strategy seems to have created this shared value of shifting normative expectations around IPV as a private, domestic affair. 14 Ministry of Women and Child Development,

21 6 BIBLIOGRAPHY Reports by SERP 1. Jamuna, P. (2014a). Gender Booklet. Hyderabad: SERP. 2. Jamuna, P. (2014b). Community managed family counseling centers: Gender justice by women for women. Hyderabad: SERP. 3. Jamuna, P. (2013). Front Soldiers in Women s Empowerment. Hyderabad: SERP. 4. Jamuna, P. (2011). Gender Unit Report for the World Bank Mission. Hyderabad: Gender Unit, SERP. 5. Jamuna, P. (nd). Safety of women: Rights and laws (Telugu). Hyderabad: SERP. 6. SERP & Centre for World Solidarity (2006). Women s Self-help organizations in India: Opportunities for counseling and legal assistance. Hyderabad: SERP. 7. SERP (2008). Indira Kranthi Patham. Chapter-II. Hyderabad: SERP. 8. SERP (2010). Indira Kranthi Patham. Implementation of SHGs (IKP) program in Andhra Pradesh. Hyderabad: SERP. 9. SERP (2011). Andhra Pradesh State Perspective and Implementation Plan. Hyderabad: SERP. 10. SERP (2012). Indira Kranthi Patham (2012). Origin, organization structure and implementation of IKP in AP. Hyderabad: SERP. 11. SERP. (2014a). Draft Introduction Chapter of RIGP Project Implementation Plan. Hyderabad: SERP. 12. SERP (2014b). About Us. Retrieved from SERP, Telangana: SHGTG/FrontServlet?requestType 13. SERP (2014c). About Us. Retrieved from SERP, Andhra Pradesh: SHGAP/FrontServlet?requestType 14. SERP (2015). Report on Social Action Committees of SHG Federations in Andhra Pradesh. Hyderabad: SERP. 15. SERP (nd). Velugu project in Andhra Pradesh. Chapter 3. Hyderabad: SERP. Circulars issued by SERP 1. Guidelines to set up family counseling centers at Mandal level dt Guidelines to form complaint cells against sexual harassment at SPMU level and DPMU/TPMU levels dt Guidelines to set up free family counseling centers dt Prevention of sexual harassment of women at workplace Act 2013 dt Provision of socio-legal support under SCSP/TSP for the devadasi or jogini system dt

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24 8 APPENDIX Fig. 2. CMFCC coverage in United AP ( ) No. of CMFCCs Adilabad Karmnagar Khammam Mahaboobnagar Medak Nalgonda Nizamabad Ranga Reddy Warangal Anantapur Chittoor East Godavari Guntur Kadapa Krishna Kurnool Nellore Prakasam Srikakulam Visakhapatnam Vizianagaram West Godavari Total No. of mandals No. of CMFCCs Source: Jamuna, P. (2014). Community Managed Family Counseling Centers: Gender justice by Women for Women. Hyderabad: SERP. 22

25 Table 2. Number and nature of cases received by CMFCCs in AP and Telangana Name of the District Dowry harassment Sexual abuse Family dispute Child marriage Child labor Trafficking Anti-arrack Insurance MFI Others Telangana 1 Adilabad Karimnagar Khammam Warangal Nizamabad Medak Mahabubnagar Rangareddy Nalgonda Total Andhra Pradesh 10 Ananthapoor Kadapa Chithoor Kurnool Nellore Prakasam Guntur Krishna West Godavari East Godavari Visakhapatnam Viziayanagaram Srikakulam Total Source: Jamuna, P. (2014). Community Managed Family Counseling Centers: Gender justice by Women for Women. Hyderabad: SERP. 23

26 Table 3. Type and amount of compensation received by survivors accessing CMFCCs in AP and Telangana ( ) District No of Beneficiaries Cash Land Acres Value Rs. House Value Cents Value Gold Grms Value Rs. Others Benefited Total Amount 1 Krishna West Godavari Prakasam Guntur Anantapur Chittoor Kadapa Kurnool Visakhapatnam East Godavari Nellore Srikakulam AP Totals Mahabubnagar Nalgonda Warangal Ranga Reddy Medak Khammam Nizamabad Adilabad Karimnagar TGTotals Grand Total Source: Jamuna, P. (2014). Community Managed Family Counseling Centers: Gender justice by Women for Women. Hyderabad: SERP. 24